Monthly Archives: May 2013

Okay, okay, it’s not Tuesday. But I meant to post this all day yesterday. I felt a little ashamed at how bad my pictures are, but if I don’t just post it now, it’ll never happen.

Lucas is obsessed with chocolate chip cookies. Me, of course I like them, but they aren’t my favorite dessert by a long shot. Sometimes at his work, they will have a catered meeting. The highlight of these meetings being the “cookie pie”. He brought some back for me once, and it was kind of indescribable. A mix of cookie dough and streusel topping, but not really pie crust.

After some digging around, I found this Cookie Pie recipe that is apparently standard on a bag of chocolate chips. I had to make it for his birthday!

1 9″ pie crust, either from your favorite recipe or store bought. I always use the classic recipe in the Best Recipe book, though they’ve since come up with their Fool-proof pie crust with vodka that I haven’t tried.

3 eggs

1/2 cup flour

1/2 cup white sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar, packed

1/2 cup butter, melted and cooled (1 stick)

1 cup semi sweet chocolate chips

1 tsp vanilla

couple pinches of fleur de sel or sea salt

Preheat oven to 325 degrees

Prepare your pie crust. I like to have it rolled out, then in the fridge for a while before baking.

Beat eggs until frothy, then mix in flours and sugars until well blended.

Add cooled butter, vanilla and a pinch of salt. The batter will be thinner than cookie dough.

Stir in chocolate chips. Save this for the last step, or even pour the chocolate chips onto the pie after pouring the mixture into the pie crust. The chocolate chips usually sink to the bottom. You have an option to add a cup of pecans in at this stage, though you will likely need a deep-dish pie plate for that.

Bake for 50-60 minutes at 325 degrees. The pie will puff up while baking. Take it out when the center looks set.

Take pie out of the oven and immediately sprinkle a pinch or so of fleur de sel on the top of the pie.

The pie is best served warm, with ice cream or whipped cream! But I baked mine in the morning and we ate it cold in the middle of a mall after seeing a movie. Then microwave individual slices for about 10-15 seconds to get the fresh baked cookie taste. I cut my pie into 12 slices, but it really makes more like 16 slices. It is very intense!

I recently started a new position at work. It’s not all that exciting recently, but it has kind of cut into my blogging time. I need to get used to a new style of time management. I have a couple post ideas, so I should get back on board soon…

Here is a crescent shawl/scarf that I made for Lucas’s Mom. Her birthday is the day after his birthday, so we did a joint celebration this week.

No mods. I used size 8/0 beads that I had left over from another project. In fact, the yarn is an extra skein from another project as well. I was so sure that I would use more than one skein, and I had about 1.4 skeins left. So now I have three little balls of this yarn left.

A loose cast-on is crucial for this project so that the blooms on the edging have points and aren’t just rounded. The directions call for casting on using a much larger needle. From reading the KnitList and Joan Schrouder‘s expert posts, I know that using a larger needle just gives you a larger first row of knitting, it doesn’t make the cast-on looser (for Long-Tail). Trusting Joan’s expertise, I used the same size needle to cast on, but I made sure to separate each stitch farther apart on the needle as I was casting on. This way the extra yarn is in the foundation and not in the first row of stitches. This worked out fine! But I was kind of stressing about it the whole time.

Another thing that is helpful, is to use two separate strands of yarn when doing a Long-Tail cast-on with a bunch of stitches. That way you don’t have to worry if you have a long enough tail. And put a stitch marker every 50 stitches or so, in case you lose your count.

I think Carol loved it! I wish I had gotten a picture of her wearing it!

I have been pretty bad about Tasty Tuesday… I have been finishing some projects though, so we’ll continue on this FO parade.

This is what I made for my Mom for Mother’s Day:

A chicken potholder! Just hanging out in the industrial space at my work…

Pattern: Chicken Potholder by Myra Mitchell (no website, but here’s the first site I saw that carried it when googled)

I used a couple fat quarters that I got from Jo-Ann’s. There is batting and Insulbrite inside. The binding was actually left over from my quilt. Though next time I might just buy bias tape.

The pattern wasn’t too difficult, but I had a lot of trouble sewing on the binding. I am still a bit of an amateur when it comes to sewing. And the base basically makes a circle, but it was hard to sew with stuffing in the head and tail. And next time I will use the machine to sew down the other side of the binding. No need to fuss with handsewing. It’s just a potholder!

The pattern suggests that you make two potholders, but this one ended up being more work than I thought. One potholder only uses two fat quarters, so it’s economical. I used embroidery floss for the eyes, though you can use beads.

I know I’ll make at least one more in the future, especially because I already cut out plastic templates of all the pieces! I have another potholder to make, that is shaped like a pie. But then I’ll have to start thinking about my next quilt project! Lucas is helping me design an applique quilt, but it may not be my next project.

I decided to go for it with this variegated yarn and finished the shawl. Thank you all for your input on it! It’s weird, I had initially really liked the stockinette sections but was hesitant about the lace parts. But when it was all finished and blocked, I loved how the lace part looked, and I was a little dubious of the stockinette!

I didn’t make any modifications to the pattern. I still have quite a bit of this yarn left over, because I had four skeins. Maybe I’ll end up giving away the last skein unless I find something awesome to do with it. These colors look different in every picture! Probably in real life, it is most like the first picture. The top straight edge curls quite a bit. I don’t think it’s meant to lay flat, but just be forewarned.

I would definitely recommend the pattern. And Sarah is doing a big KAL with giveaways in her Sexy Knitter group!

I hesitated to post about this. I don’t usually broach serious topics here.

Last week, Lucas’s father passed away unexpectedly. He was very beloved by all who knew him. I wish I had gotten to know him better and am saddened that I won’t be able to. I have learned so much about him in the last week and I wanted to pay my respects here briefly.

Mike found success in almost everything that he attempted. He was a respected documentary filmmaker, screenwriter, author and activist. The L.A. Times had a wonderful piece about him here.

Here is one of his documentaries, “The Murder of Fred Hampton”:

And if you haven’t seen “The China Syndrome,” you need to rent it immediately. It is amazing.

Mods and Notes: I used the same size needle for all parts of the hat. I got gauge on a 5 for the larger needle and it seemed excessive to go down to a US3 for the brim. Also, I have a big head, so I thought a little extra room wouldn’t be bad. When I got it wet the superwash really loosened up. I liked the size that way, so if I had thought about it, I would have stuffed it while drying or pinned it out to keep it that size. It did snug itself back up while it was drying.

I don’t know if it’s a super flattering shape on me, but I am still getting used to wearing hats. And even getting these pictures was quite an ordeal! I did really enjoy the pattern. I pre-ordered Alana’s book and may have to make a bunch of things from it. Like all of the sweaters!

Oh, and because I never posted any additional pictures of my Cerato Cowl, here they are.

The colors of this cowl have really grown on me! I like it more and more each time I see it!

I have actually finished project #2 from the Epic KAL-CAL as well, but I need to get better pictures of it. Hopefully next week will be a more productive blogging week!